Pages

Wednesday, 16 January 2013

Revealed: Head of Monitor Has Ties with Private Healthcare Lobby Group Who See Tax, Pensions and NHS Brand as Barrier in 'Fair Playing Field' Review.

The latest unholy mess taking place due to
the undemocratic, unnecessary and complicated Health and Social Care Act, is
the ‘Fair Playing Field’, review being undertaken by the new NHS regulator,
Monitor.

A nine-month process has now seen all the
submissions handed in and each organisation is wondering what is going to be
the result of the review, come the end of March, this year.

April the 1st is the time when
the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) are due to takeover, from the Primary
Care Trusts, abolished thanks to the new legislation. The ‘Fair Playing Field’
findings, which will conclude in time for this date, will mark the end of
the NHS as we know it and increase the fragmentation of services across the
country.

Social
Investigations can now reveal a private healthcare
group’s submission, which brings to the attention of Monitor the barriers the private sector perceive to achieve a Fair Playing Field, which include corporation tax, VAT, pensions and the NHS brand. The only problem is, this same lobby group were
heavily influential in maintaining competition in the Health bill during the sham of a
'so-called 'listening exercise'. Furthermore, this same lobby group had
previously met with the head of Monitor in a 'like-minded' meeting, bringing
the impartiality of the review into question.

The NHS Partner's Network (NHSPN) is made up of private providers who provide
NHS services and whose membership includes companies that include Care UK and
Virgin Care. The submission
made by the NHSPN was handed to Monitor in the early stages of the Fair Playing
Field review last year, titled: 'NHS Partners Network response to Monitor's
Call for initial submissions.'

On the subject of 'economic components', it states: '...to achieve any given
post-tax rate of return, on an investment a corporation tax paying entity would
have to charge higher prices than an NHS body or charity...the estimated
average magnitude of this is that it now adds between 2% and 3% to independent
providers.'

Monitor list 'tax asymmetries' as number four under 'Key Issues' to be looked
at during the 'Fair Playing Field' review. As well as corporate tax
breaks, the NHSPN have also suggested the review look at the impact of VAT,
stating, 'while NHS providers can claim back VAT on certain contracted-out
services, independent providers cannot do so.' In addition, public sector
providers are at an advantage because of the 'attractiveness' of the pension
scheme ', which according to the submission, creates a barrier to workforce
flexibility.'

Part 'C' of the submission, asks 'What do we already know about the elements of
a fair playing field?' The response from the NHSPN points toward an
'illuminating piece of independent work' done in 2009 by the Office of Health
Economics, partly paid for by the NHSPN.' The study builds on a previous work
conducted by the University of York, but as the NHSPN funded study 'summarises
the York study', they chose only to attach the study they helped fund. The
NHSPN is however adamant that the study remains unbiased, stating: 'The report
was co-funded by the NHS Confederation and the report itself makes completely
clear that it was wholly independent. It went through OHE's normal peer review
processes.’

In addition to providing this study, the NHSPN submission tries to weaken the
element of public sector training and medical education, which is provided by
the NHS. 'Most NHS education and training is 'funded centrally and separately
from the main provision of care budgets and this does not therefore directly
impact on the fairness of the playing field in the market'. However, as Mr Worskett admitted in a reponse to Social Investigations, when asked why this should be left out he said,

'We do in fact recognise there is a legitimate discussion about medical education and training but there is a need for a much fuller and longer analysis of the issues before any conclusions can be reached.'

This is followed by a bullet point that states: 'A significant (but not yet
quantified) proportion of independent providers do now participate in NHS
education and training, in some cases at no cost to the NHS, and while this is
doubtless only a small proportion of the whole, it must not be overlooked.'

A further disadvantage the lobby group highlights, is in the 'NHS' itself.
Under a heading 'The impact of the NHS "brand"', they state, 'studies
of the deregulated utilities markets have suggested that one problem, in
developing a fairer playing field, was customer familiarity with and loyalty to
the ex-public sector incumbent brands. There is a possibility that similar
responses might work unfairly to the disadvantage of independent providers in
the NHS market...'

Monitor are meant to be impartial, but the discovery of an internal memo
written by NHSPN director, David Worskett reveals both he and Monitor chief,
David Bennett met during the Health bill 'pause' under the auspices of free
market think tank, Reform.

The document, which was discovered by research blog, Social investigations, was
an update informing the groups members on the lobbying that had taken place
during the so-called 'listening exercise'. Mr Worksett informs his members how:
'I had a second lengthy meeting...under the auspices of "Reform",
with only a handful of other (all like-minded) people present, including David
Bennett, the chair of Monitor. He has also consistently taken the same line as
us throughout.'

Furthermore, the same memo informs us how David Worksett 'coordinated' the
position of the NHSPN during the pause, 'carefully with Monitor...' When asked
what this position was, the NHSPN claimed it was 'to establish that Monitor,
like us, had not seen the introduction of competition as an objective in its
own right but, instead, as a means of improving quality of care for patients.'

David Bennett distanced himself from the
comments saying: ‘The
comments made are the opinion and conjecture of Mr Worskett and Monitor cannot
be held responsible for these. Mr Bennett did attend the same meetings as Mr
Worskett during the NHS listening exercise but at no time has he referred to
himself as a ‘like minded’ person to Mr Worskett. Similarly there was no
coordination of position between Monitor and the NHS Partners Network. ‘

David Bennett's bias was brought into question previously when a FOI revealed an email from an unnamed McKinsey executive
from May 2010, suggesting it was exploiting its privileged access. It stated: “We have been gathering our thinking
on the implications of the new Government programme for the NHS (and) have
started to share this with clients. Would you like to meet to discuss it?” The recipient of the email was David Bennett.

None of this would have been necessary if it hadn’t been for the Health and
Social Care Act. The manner in which the services are being sold off, serves
only to fragment services and pit providers against each other. David Bennett was
a former senior partner at McKinsey & Co, the architects of the £20bn
savings that are being justified to sell off large chunks of the NHS. The ‘Fair
Playing Field is about to launch the NHS into a brave new world, and what’s the
betting the outcome will favour the private sector?

2 comments:

So the private health companies are bitching about the fact that they have to pay taxes on the profits they get from private healthcare provision which will drive up their prices.Was there ever a better reason not to not enter a market dominated by public health?Recently Virgincare was complaining about the unfair disadvantage that indigenous Nhs had as a public sector health provider.Is any more proof of the insanity and avarice of the tory HSCB.Private healthcare providers stating that they cannot compete with public healthcare providers.Thus underpinning the suspected tory strategy of destroying the NHS any which way,cash starvation,calumny,fragmentation,because only by destroying the NHS and it's cheaper health provision capability can the private healthcare actually compete,i.e,when the NHS is non-existent or turned into a subsidence 'poor house'where we,the plebs and our relatives can languish and die to ease the concience of the rich and shameless-and of course-our elected representatives,who represent themselves and their best interests,a shamefully large part represented by their financial investments in private healthcare provision.Was there ever such shameful shamelessness immunity to shame and the corrupt passage of a Bill conspicuously about self-interest and big business.the tories wont be happy until the NHS is eviscerated to make room for 'competetive'[profiteering]private healthcare,and will do so without conscience,care or shame-and with impunity.

Abacus I agree with your reasoning entirely. However, who apart from the NHS is going to fund the training of our health professionals. Surely that is a charge that should be laid at all those public and private interests that want a piece of our publicly funded NHS. My view is that it (the NHS)should remain completely within the public sphere and private capital should stay out.